According to Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> writes:

But then if someone else patents it, you can be accused of infringing
your own invention. The "first to file" rule has changed the
calculation significantly.

You're disadvantaged either way: a patent can be revoked if you don't >>actively defend it.

I have never heard that about patents, only about trademarks. Can you
cite a case?

Patents require periodic maintenance fees. If you don't pay the fee,
your patent is abandoned. Here's the EPO's fee schedule: https://www.epo.org/en/legal/official-journal/2022/04/a42.html

Then there are countries that either don't recognize Public Domain, or
make it very difficult to add something into it.

Public domain is a concept from copyright. Why should it play a role
for patents?

He presumably means prior art. Publishing in a way that patent examiners
will find is surprisingly hard. IBM used to have a publications specifically for stuff they didn't want to patent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bulletin

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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On 2025-06-28 15:48, John Levine wrote (in part):

Patents require periodic maintenance fees. If you don't pay the fee,
your patent is abandoned. Here's the EPO's fee schedule: https://www.epo.org/en/legal/official-journal/2022/04/a42.html

In the olden days, there was also the laches defence (in the US).

He presumably means prior art. Publishing in a way that patent examiners will find is surprisingly hard. IBM used to have a publications specifically for stuff they didn't want to patent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bulletin

There are some other companies that do that (for a fee) but memory fails
me as to names.

OF

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On 6/28/25 15:48, John Levine wrote:

According to Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:

Public domain is a concept from copyright. Why should it play a role
for patents?

He presumably means prior art. Publishing in a way that patent examiners will find is surprisingly hard. IBM used to have a publications specifically for stuff they didn't want to patent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bulletin

I and someone else have something in there. It was on lazy back
linking of a forward lined list. Got a whole invention point out
of that.

Joe Seigh

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